The future of Australia's natural gas resource is one of incredible growth but a corresponding volatility in price and usage.
The production of Australian natural gas will treble by 2019 to about 1900 petajoules. But with the extra supply also comes rises in domestic prices and reduced domestic consumption. By 2019 Australia will use only 25 per cent of its produced gas. The rest will be frozen and compressed into liquefied natural gas and shipped to markets predominantly in North Asia.
Gas exports from Australia were $2.8 billion in 2004, rose to $15.4 billion in 2013 and are expected to top $70 billion before 2020. 
The unprecedented expansion of this industry has brought disruption, and inverted the market forces: prices are going up even as production is trebled, due to the demand from north Asian economies and the pricing mechanism that pegs LNG to oil.
It is also due to the fact that most LNG supply contracts with north Asian buyers are forward-contracts (some lasting 15 years) rather than the cheaper spot-price as used for crude oil. The higher prices for guaranteed LNG supply has pushed back into Australia's domestic market.
Australia's export of energy will occur in a global context. In 2005, total world demand for energy was about 490 quadrillion BTUs, with the developed and developing world having half each; by 2040, the world demand will be about 800 quadrillion BTU and two-thirds of the demand will be from the developing world, says the World Bank. The bulk of the developing world's energy demand will occur in Australia's region.
Matt Zema, chief executive of Australian Energy Market Operator, says LNG operates in a global market and is pegged to another global commodity price, oil. So trebling Australian gas production does not see a drop in prices - in fact the price of gas has trebled in the past decade.
Most of Australia's extra gas production to the end of the decade will be exported to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, boosting export revenues from $2.8 billion in 2004 to a forecast $70 billion in 2019.
But AEMO forecasts a decreasing domestic gas usage as the price of it rises, manufacturing relies less on gas, and "smart building" technologies allowing gas-to-electric switching, further decreasing demand.
The drop in domestic demand for Australian gas will be a gradual tapering for residential and industrial use, but the gas price will dramatically affect the use of gas for electricity generation, which will more than halve between now and 2020.
While domestic gas prices cut consumption in the short term, and Australia's gas exports treble, the new formula for judging supply, demand and price is caught in a complex new matrix, says utilities and energy leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mark Coughlin.
"Our energy system is in a state of disruption. The markets to our north are energy-hungry, and a lot of the decisions of those markets affect our own domestic dynamics."
He says large Asian markets are driven by a need for fossil fuels and Australia's markets will be influenced by the fuels those markets want to buy from Australia. The equation is now energy-carbon-economic growth, the way all energy pricing mechanisms will be forged in the future.
"Gas is not only proving volatile in the balance between domestic consumption and international pricing," says Coughlin. "We are also moving towards the equation being energy and carbon and economic growth, rather than having one conversation about carbon and one conversation about energy and then talking about economic growth. They are coming together."
He says the Paris conference on climate change will address the three ideas as one, and gas pricing and consumption will be a topic.
In Australia, the future of gas may be volatile pricing in the short term, but the infrastructure invested-in by the oil and gas companies has made the domestic supply system more efficient, linking an east coast market of pipelines and interconnectors. AEMO has also brought the LNG terminals at Gladstone into its Bulletin system, allowing for greater efficiencies.
Coughlin says the most important thing about the emergence of coal seam gas, together with conventional natural gas is that Australia has a mix of energy sources, in particular three major hydrocarbon sources of gas, oil and coal, with solar, hydro and wind.
"The forecasts for decreasing electricity generation from gas are part of the global pricing mechanisms," he says. "But they have to be taken with other drivers in our domestic economy: manufacturing is moving offshore, and we have new plant and appliance technologies that reduce usage."
He also says a comeback in domestic gas use depends on the cost and efficacy of solar and storage, and new coal technologies.